Birdmóvil (2010)
Web and mobile application. Acknowledgements: REDImei (Polina Raevskaya, Adrián Ortuzar, Josep Rius, Yosip Sverko); Eduardo Núñez Fernández (Municipal Archivist); Luis Mª Pascual (Dept. of Promotion of the Arts, Fundación Municipal de Cultura, Educación y Universidad Popular, Gijón); security staff at LABoral, especially Bustillo; Fiumfoto; Tomás Miñambres
Photo: Marcos Morilla
The Birdmóvil project came about through a process of dialogue among different individuals, spaces and technologies. That said, more than a project, Birdmóvil is intended to act as a tool to be used, for interaction.
The idea is for its various forms –mobile application, web and installation– to expand the understanding of the space and the micro-narratives offered by the place, and to alter the notion of time and the single or hegemonic discourse underpinning the heavy-handed architecture of Universidad Laboral, the former vocational training institution. Micro-narratives are to history what micro-nations are to states. In a context where notions of state and nation are as geographical as they are ideological, the mobility of frontiers and borders does not exclusively depend on cartographic references. Birdmóvil offers passers-by, visitors or local citizens a space for the intervention and perception of the local, through various readings and writings, discontinuous micro-narratives
legitimised by their existence or emergence.
The route taken by the driver (user-producer) of the Birdmóvil will define this perception of the territory. Indeed, along its trajectory one comes across contents in various formats that one can then expand and respond to, thus generating new information and adding layers of complexity to the architecture of the environment.
It is through its uses that a space becomes a place. The potential of some non-places of the old Universidad Laboral is still waiting to be exploited while others are in construction. Birdmóvil is a flexible tool for mobility, not only through space but also through time. Collective memory may well be even heavier than the walls of the building.
